Gulfport Energy Cuts Costs While Maximizing Production in the Utica Shale

“Quorum makes it possible for us to do more with less. Automating manual processes means that people can take care of more assets, and that we can grow and add assets that let us maximize production.”

Judson Shreves, Production Operations Manager

Gulfport Energy Corporation is an Oklahoma City-based independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company with its principal producing properties located in the Utica Shale of Eastern Ohio and along the Louisiana Gulf Coast. In addition, Gulfport holds a sizeable acreage position in the Alberta Oil Sands in Canada through its 25% interest in Grizzly Oil Sands ULC.

In 2011, Gulfport secured a sizable position in the core of the Utica Shale, achieving early entrant advantages in what would prove to become the most productive area of the play, the Point Pleasant formation. The company initiated an aggressive drilling program to begin developing Utica Shale resources. Within three years, Gulfport had 165 wells online in the Utica.

Each of the well sites required 24-hour-a-day monitoring by a contract operator to prevent unplanned downtime and report on production. Working in 12-hour shifts, contract operators documented field data with handwritten notes and tracked production using spreadsheets. These manual processes were limiting Gulfport from optimizing its operations in the most productive area of the Utica shale play.